Adventures in being a volunteer advocate to fight poverty while raising children. My insights are seen through the lens of motherhood and a desire to help moms uplift each other to make a better world for our kids.
By Cynthia Changyit Levin, @ccylevin

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Sometimes a shocking story (shocking to those living lives of comfort) sweeps around the anti-poverty circles, that succintly highlights the urgent need for aid and advocacy. The last one I featured here was the story about nursing mothers eating mud cakes just to fill their stomachs. Horrible. This next one comes from Bread for the World who has staff traveling abroad in Central America. Here is an excerpt from Brian Duss' experience in Nicaragua...

"Have you ever heard of people trading sex for garbage? In the La Chureca landfill just outside of Managua, children scavenge 100 acres of garbage for anything that can be sold for pennies. Sometimes girls have sex with the truck drivers who dump refuse at the landfill in exchange for bottles or aluminum cans -- instead of the 20 cents they might otherwise get. What can you even do with information like that? Seriously. Well, a good first step would be to write your senators and representative in Congress and let them know that you want them to make foreign assistance a priority. "